US Plays Its Last Card—and It’s a Loser (Myanmar crisis)

China just wants to have access to the petroleum reserves of Burma. So for the poster a few posts above, yes they are believed to have meaningful oil/nat gas reserves.

 

It is not about cool or not. It is all about national interest. The world is a cruel place. Let's face it.

And frankly if your leaders don't have national interests in their heart, they shouldn't be your leaders.

 

U.S. freezes assets, restricts travel of Myanmar junta

* Story Highlights
* U.S. Treasury Department freezing the assets of 14 members of government
* State Department is also imposing travel restrictions on those senior members
* U.S. official: Myanmar government should look to diplomacy rather than force
* President Bush: "The American people stand in solidarity," with demonstrators

(CNN) -- The United States imposed new sanctions on Myanmar's ruling junta Thursday as its Southeast Asian neighbors urged a peaceful resolution to growing political unrest in the country.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced it is freezing the assets of 14 senior members of Myanmar's government.

The State Department is also imposing travel restrictions against the same junta leaders.

Myanmar state media said nine people have been killed in a crackdown on anti-government demonstrations, during which soldiers reportedly fired into crowds and beat Buddhist monks. A Japanese journalist was among the dead, Japan's Foreign Ministry confirmed.

"The Burmese government has got to stop thinking that this can be solved by police and military and start thinking about the need for some genuine reconciliation with the broad spectrum of political activists in the country," Christopher Hill, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said Thursday.

President Bush also weighed in.

"The world is watching the people of Burma [now known as Myanmar] take to the streets to demand their freedom, and the American people stand in solidarity with these brave individuals," Bush said in a statement read by press secretary Dana Perino.

"I call on all nations that have influence with the regime to join us in supporting the aspirations of the Burmese people and to tell the Burmese junta to cease using force on its own people, who are peacefully expressing their desire for change," the statement said.

Myanmar was formerly known as Burma.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon dispatched envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Myanmar. The Myanmar government said Thursday that he will be welcomed.

After an informal meeting Thursday at the United Nations, the foreign ministers who make up the Association of Southeast Asian Nations urged Myanmar to stop the suppression. They called for the release of all political prisoners, including iconic activist Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi, a 1991 Nobel Prize winner, has been under house arrest on and off for years.

"They were appalled to receive reports of automatic weapons being used and demanded the Myanmar government immediately desist from the use of violence against demonstrators," said the statement, read by ASEAN Chairman George Yeo, Singapore's foreign minister.

"They expressed their revulsion to Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win over reports that the demonstrations in Myanmar are being suppressed by violent force and that there has been a number of fatalities."

Myanmar is an active member of the 10-nation association, which includes its neighbor Thailand as well as Singapore and Indonesia.

The foreign ministers "strongly urged Myanmar to exercise utmost restraint and seek a political solution," the statement continued. "They called upon Myanmar to resume its efforts at national reconciliation with all parties concerned and work toward a peaceful transition to democracy," the ASEAN statement read.

"I think Myanmar have their own position," Yeo added. "We are really gravely concerned."

Other influential nations weighed in as well.

Japan, a source of much of Myanmar's foreign aid, urged the junta not to "high-handedly resort to violence," Kyodo News Agency reported.

"We strongly expect that the situation will be resolved through dialogue," Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said, according to Kyodo.

Prime Minister John Howard of Australia announced sanctions on Myanmar's "loathsome regime" and pushed China "to exert a positive influence on the regime," Kyodo reported.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu urged the government of Myanmar to show restraint in dealing with the protesters.

"China has paid great attention to the situation in Myanmar and we hope that all concerned parties of Myanmar show restraint and properly handle the current issue," she said Thursday, according China's Xinhua news agency.

All AboutMyanmar • Yangon



Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/09/27/myanmar.diplomacy/index.html#cnnSTCText

 

September 27, 2007

China Braces for Prospect of Changes in Myanmar

By DAVID LAGUE

BEIJING, Sept. 26 — As China publicly calls for stability and reconciliation in Myanmar, it is also preparing for the possibility that the mounting protests could lead to the downfall of the military junta heading its resource-rich neighbor, regional experts said Wednesday.

China is Myanmar’s most important trading partner, investor and strategic ally, and has consistently thwarted attempts to put pressure on Myanmar’s rulers, through sanctions or other measures. On Wednesday, China blocked an effort by the United Nations Security Council to condemn Myanmar. In January, China blocked a Council resolution condemning Myanmar’s human rights record.

But China has also maintained discreet links with opponents of Myanmar’s military rulers and tolerates the activity of some exiled opponents on Chinese soil, the experts said. And China has urged the junta to avoid a repeat of the violent crackdown on demonstrations in 1988 that led to extended periods of house arrest for the opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

In a meeting with Myanmar’s foreign minister, U Nyan Win, on Sept. 13, Tang Jiaxuan, a member of China’s State Council and a former foreign minister, said the Chinese government hoped that its neighbor could restore stability and promote national reconciliation, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

“If Aung San Suu Kyi became the leader of Burma tomorrow, China would be the first country to roll out the red carpet,” said Bertil Lintner, an analyst of Myanmar politics based in Thailand. “But they wouldn’t like to see it happen.”

China, already stung by human rights advocates who have warned that its ties with Sudan’s repressive government could cast the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing as the “Genocide Olympics,” wants to avoid further damage to its reputation from Myanmar’s handling of political dissent, analysts and foreign diplomats in Beijing say. They also say China would prefer that the Burmese junta maintain stability in a nation that is an important supplier of raw materials.

Two-way trade between the countries increased 39.4 percent in the first seven months of this year over the same period in 2006, reaching $1.11 billion, according to official Chinese government customs figures.

Experts say China is eager to import energy from a country that has proven natural gas reserves of 0.54 trillion cubic meters, according to a 2007 statistical review of world energy.

China would also like to keep a pliant government in place to develop strategically important access to the Indian Ocean, according to security experts.

In an effort to expand its influence in Myanmar, China has become the junta’s biggest arms supplier and has extended discounted loans and development aid to the nation.

There have been reports that China wants to build a $2 billion oil pipeline from Myanmar’s coast on the Bay of Bengal to Yunnan Province in China that would allow the delivery of oil from the Middle East without passing through the Strait of Malacca, a waterway that could be easily closed during a period of international tension or conflict.

Officially, China maintains its customary diplomatic stance of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries. “As a neighbor of Myanmar, we hope to see that its society is stable and its economy developing,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, said Tuesday at a regular news briefing in Beijing.

But, analysts say, there is evidence that China has been hedging its bets on political developments in Myanmar. Mr. Lintner, the Thailand-based analyst, said Beijing maintained unofficial contacts with exiled Myanmar opposition groups in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. Other experts agree that these informal contacts with exiles, along with recent official statements from Beijing calling for a peaceful settlement of differences among all groups in Myanmar, suggest that China has doubts about the junta’s survival.

“One day, they expect the military will no longer be running the place,” said Trevor Wilson, an expert on Myanmar at the Australian National University who was the Australian ambassador to Myanmar from 2000 to 2003.

“It will be political parties, maybe even the current opposition, running the place,” he said, “and China needs to keep open some channels of communication with them and not put them entirely offside.”

Despite China’s close economic and political ties with the junta, there are also signs that it is dissatisfied with some aspects of its performance. Mr. Wilson said senior Chinese diplomats in Myanmar had been bluntly critical of the junta’s poor economic management and its inability to stem the flow of illicit drugs across the Chinese border.

At times, political tensions in the early years of this decade led to the suspension of new Chinese loans to Myanmar, he said. Regional experts also noted that China had openly called on the junta to show restraint in dealing with the protests.

In his meeting this month with Myanmar’s foreign minister, Mr. Nyan Win, Mr. Tang, the Chinese diplomatic envoy, also said Beijing wanted Myanmar to move toward “a democracy process that is appropriate for the country,” Xinhua reported.

That did not mean that China wanted Myanmar to adopt Western-style democracy, analysts said, but it was a suggestion that the junta should move toward a settlement with its opponents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/world/asia/27china.html?ref=world


So China is supporting the junta, with arms, investment, trade, and preventing action by the Security Council by blocking any resolution critical of the regime with its veto. At the same time, it is reported to have had some contacts with the opposition, to hedge its bets. Clearly, it doesn't care about what the junta is doing to the Burmese people, but what advantage China can get from the Burmese regime. Access to raw materials. A pipeline to avoid a blockade of the of the Malacca Straits, should that occur. Planning ahead in case of a conflict over Taiwan. A deepwater port for its navy on the Indian Ocean, if possible, and one would assume an attendant base for its air force.

Power politics and ruthless. And Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq renders American protests rather meaningless to the world, regardless of what most Americans might think of the Burmese junta, if they knew where Burma was on a map. Great, just great. (insert roll-eyes here) Expect a different foreign policy from a Democratic President. A lot of good that does us today.



D&D. Impeach Bush for Gross Incompetence.

 

I'm not as optimistic about Democrats being more proactive in foreign policy. Like it or not, Iraq has sucked out most of the political capital for these ventures. We also don't know how much longer Iraq will extend into the next term.

I think success in foreign policy for the successor would be to mend the fences the Deciding Idiot broke and ripped apart in the last 7 years. That would mean honoring our treaties, establishing more credibility between the UN and the American people, redefining China's status in relation to our economic ties, our perception of human rights, and our commitment to honor the defense treaty with Taiwan, giving a shot in the arm to our cooperative efforts in counterterrorism with other international agencies, and finally creating a new energy forum that will relieve price instability and "arms building" that will inevitably cause armed conflicts reminiscent of the years before the first world war.

Before we can chide and interfere with other nation's human rights standards, we have to build our own credibility and boost our relationships with our formerly stong allies. Especially when the bill is becoming too steep for our coffers.